Straight welcomes WRAP's food waste budget announcement

Container supplier Straight has welcomed the Waste & Resources Action Programme announcement that it has set aside a £3.5 million budget for local authorities who want to start separate food waste collections.

Straight chief executive Jonathan Straight told MRW he hopes that the WRAP announcement will lead to more councils beginning separate collections of food waste.

WRAP local government services director Philip Ward said that weekly separate food collections were more effective at capturing waste than mixed food collections with garden waste.

Straight explained: As market leaders in the provision of kitchen and kerbside caddies for food waste we are committed to this collection method and we have made considerable investments to support the manufacture of our full product range in the UK.

Philip Ward correctly identifies the high participation rates and high capture rates resulting from such collections as well as the practical aspect of having to process mixed food and garden waste and not being able to use anaerobic digestion for this. We believe that the best method of dealing with garden waste is to compost it at home as this is the most sensible environmental option. Much less food waste then needs to be collected, in turn using much less energy. AD then offers a sustainable way of dealing with this waste and contributes to the Governments targets on renewable energy.

The agenda for food waste collections was set out in the Governments Waste Strategy 2007.

Straight said: Dry recyclables with food waste collections has shown to be able to achieve a 50 per cent recycling target without a free garden waste collection. We are therefore delighted that WRAP will be assisting councils who could not otherwise afford to have this in their mix of services.

Ben Elliot, the co-founder of luxury lifestyle company Quintessentially, is to advise the Government on a £15m fund to support charities redistributing food waste following his appointment as ‘food surplus and waste champion’.

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